MACBETH, Shakespeare, Northern Broadsides at New Vic, Newc'l u Lyme till 1 Ju
Macbeth: William Shakespeare
Northern Broadsides at the New Vic, Newcastle under Lyme Tkts 01782 717962
Runs: 1h 50m: till 1 June 2002 (Ends tour)
Review: Rod Dungate, New Vic, Newcastle under Lyme, 29 May 2002
Fast, furious, you leave on an emotional high: clear as a bell.It's fast, furious, no-nonsense, but very clear. Although the staging is minimal – an orange-red carpet surrounded by a metal grid covering a perimeter of ground lights, a banquet represented by two actors, Birnam Wood by a green banner. Yet it has a feeling of soil about it. All the characters (other than Lady M and Malcolm) you feel would know how to handle a plough – even Duncan in Tim Barker's gentle, grounded performance.
The drama, the tension, in the production comes from its almost unremitting pace – it has a relentless movement accentuated by Conrad Nelson's pounding music. The effect is also to keep personal emotions in check – almost at bay - though emotional content is not lacking, it comes from the story itself. The play is not damaged by this, just different, and enormously accessible. Leaving the theatre after its 1 hour 50 minutes you feel as if you've completed a 100 m sprint and on one hell of an emotional high.
Director Barnie Rutter has also cut the scene in which the Macduff family are killed. It's an important scene, but not nearly as powerful as the scene in which Macduff learns of their deaths. In Rutter's production this scene is all the more powerful because the news comes to us as a surprise – putting us at one with Macduff. How wonderfully Richard Standing plays this scene: here the contained emotion rule is broken as Standing opens the floodgates in an arresting and heartbreaking moment – 'What all my pretty chickens and their dam/ At one fell swoop?'
Helen Shiels's Lady Macbeth is a modern woman. She punches out her lines with a coldness and matter-of-factness of a woman used to giving orders and being taken note of: she carries an underlying sense of danger and she is not a woman you'd want to cross. In contrast Andrew Vincent's Macbeth is, perhaps, a hands-on farmer. He is huge and faithful – faithful to his king but more faithful to his wife. A good man swept up by a tide of events he simply doesn't have the power to control. As Vincent embarks on Macbeth's final speeches Macbeth's sense of relief at his final doom is palpable.
Adam Sunderland brings a 'new order' quality to Malcolm. Here is a new type of leader who gets his hands dirty only metaphorically. He looks neater, as if he's been educated in public school, and, well, cleaner than the others. Sunderland brings to the role the positive qualities of kingship Shakespeare has already investigated in his cycle of history plays and is a ray of light at the end of this dark play.
Note: Timothy Ramsden's review from the beginning of the tour is also available on the site.
Witch: Rachel Jane Allen
Witch: Una McNulty
Witch/Fleance: Catherine Kinsella
Duncan/Doctor/Porter: Tim Barker
Malcolm: Adam Sunderland
Macduff: Richard Standing
Donalbain/Murderer: Matthew Booth
Sargeant/Murderer: Richard Hollick
Ross: Jason Furnival
Lennox: Tom Silburn
Banquo: Andrew Pollard
Macbeth: Andrew Vincent
Lady Macbeth: Helen Sheals
Servant/Percussionist/Seyton: Dennis Conlon
Servant/Percussionist: Roger Burnett
Servant: Bryony Rose Rutter
Hecate: Barrie Rutter
Director: Barrie Rutter
Designer: Jessica Worrall
Composer: Conrad Nelson
2002-05-30 14:52:51